ChatGPT just hit its second birthday. From 1 million users in four days to 10 million in 40 days, it now boasts over 200 million weekly active users. While Claude beats it in several areas, ChatGPT owns the distribution and has become the face of AI.
Let’s look at what sets ChatGPT apart right now:
Advanced Voice Mode stands out as a major advantage. This direct speech-to-speech feature creates natural conversations without text conversion steps in between. The experience feels seamless and personal.
Memory capabilities make ChatGPT a more personalized assistant. Unlike Claude, which only takes information through settings, ChatGPT learns about you through conversations. It remembers preferences and details – it even helped build my Christmas list.
The O1 reasoning models give ChatGPT an edge in complex multi-step tasks. While open source alternatives exist, they don’t quite match up in real-world performance. And this is just the preview version – the full release should outperform current options significantly.
Image generation sets ChatGPT apart from Claude, though the quality lags behind dedicated image AI. Many users still choose it for convenience since they’re already in the chat interface.
Custom GPTs give ChatGPT a major enterprise advantage. You can connect these to internal tools and APIs, turning a chat interface into a workflow automation platform. Claude’s Model Context Protocol offers similar capabilities but requires more technical setup.
Let’s compare key features between ChatGPT and Claude:
Basic Intelligence: Both excel here
Code Execution: Both have it, but ChatGPT offers more features like PDF creation and image editing
Voice Chat: ChatGPT only
Coding Previews: ChatGPT has an editable canvas, Claude shows previews
Style Matching: Claude excels here, ChatGPT struggles
Image Generation: ChatGPT only, though quality needs work
SVG Creation: Claude performs better
Writing Quality: Claude produces more creative, human-like text
Web Access: Native in ChatGPT, possible in Claude through MCP
Custom Actions: Easier in ChatGPT
Reasoning: ChatGPT’s O1 models vs Claude’s lighter self-reflection
My recommendation: Developers should use Claude, casual users should pick ChatGPT, and writers who don’t mind a learning curve should choose Claude.
For more details on AI writing capabilities, check out my analysis of Claude’s style matching features: https://adam.holter.com/claude-just-made-style-matching-dead-simple/
